Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science

In this sharp, masterfully argued book, Dani Rodrik, a leading critic from within, takes a close look at economics to examine when it falls short and when it works, to give a surprisingly upbeat account of the discipline. Drawing on the history of the field and his deep experience as a practitioner, Rodrik argues that economics can be a powerful tool that improves the world - but only when economists abandon universal theories and focus on getting the context right.

The Economics of Inequality

Succinct, accessible, and authoritative, Thomas Piketty’s The Economics of Inequality is the ideal place to start for those who want to understand the fundamental issues at the heart of one the most pressing concerns in contemporary economics and politics. This work now appears in English for the first time.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades.

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

A Day's Read

Join three literary scholars and award-winning professors as they introduce you to dozens of short masterpieces that you can finish - and engage with - in a day or less. Perfect for people with busy lives who still want to discover-or rediscover-just how transformative an act of reading can be, these 36 lectures range from short stories of fewer than 10 pages to novellas and novels of around 200 pages. Despite their short length, these works are powerful examinations of the same subjects and themes that longer "great books" discuss.

Cool: How the Brain's Hidden Quest for Cool Drives Our Economy and Shapes Our World

In Cool, the neuroscientist and philosopher Steven Quartz and the political scientist Anette Asp bring together the latest findings in brain science, economics, and evolutionary biology to form a provocative theory of consumerism, revealing how the brain's "social calculator" and an instinct to rebel are the crucial missing links in understanding the motivations behind our spending habits.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Maverick thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb had an illustrious career on Wall Street before turning his focus to his black swan theory. Not all swans are white, and not all events, no matter what the experts think, are predictable. Taleb shows that black swans, like 9/11, cannot be foreseen and have an immeasurable impact on the world.

Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills

No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever. These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life.

Targeted: How Technology Is Revolutionizing Advertising and the Way Companies Reach Consumers

Far from the catchy television spots and sleek magazine spreads are the comparatively modest ads that pop up on websites and in Internet searches. But don't be fooled - online advertising is exploding. Growing at a compound annual rate near 20%, it is now the second-largest advertising channel in the United States. Part history, part guidebook, part prediction for the future, Targeted tells the story of the companies, individuals, and innovations driving this revolution.

13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

Science starts to get interesting when things don't make sense. Science's best-kept secret is that there are experimental results and reliable data that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. If history is any precedent, we should look to today's inexplicable results to forecast the future of science. Michael Brooks heads to the scientific frontier to meet 13 modern-day anomalies and discover tomorrow's breakthroughs.

Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking, reading to partying; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over brainstorming in teams. Although they are often labeled "quiet", it is to introverts that we owe many of the great contributions to society - from van Gogh's sunflowers to the invention of the personal computer.

One of the most popular Fortune articles in many years was a cover story called "What It Takes to Be Great." Geoff Colvin offered new evidence that top performers in any field - from Tiger Woods and Winston Churchill to Warren Buffett and Jack Welch - are not determined by their inborn talents. Greatness doesn't come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades.

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.

Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body

The human body is the most fraught and fascinating, talked-about and taboo, unique yet universal fact of our lives. It is the inspiration for art, the subject of science, and the source of some of the greatest stories ever told. In Anatomies, acclaimed author of Periodic Tales Hugh Aldersey-Williams brings his entertaining blend of science, history, and culture to bear on this richest of subjects.

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

A gripping history of banking and the booms and busts that shaped the world on both sides of the Atlantic, The House of Morgan traces the trajectory of the J. P.Morgan empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the crash of 1987. Ron Chernow paints a fascinating portrait of the private saga of the Morgans and the rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved. Based on extensive interviews and access to the family and business archives, The House of Morgan is an investigative masterpiece.

The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters

One of our most renowned and brilliant historians takes a fresh look at the revolutionary intellectual movement that laid the foundation for the modern world. Liberty and equality. Human rights. Freedom of thought and expression. Belief in reason and progress. The value of scientific inquiry. These are just some of the ideas that were conceived and developed during the Enlightenment, and which changed forever the intellectual landscape of the Western world.

10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found a Self-Help That Actually Works

After having a nationally televised panic attack on Good Morning America, Dan Harris knew he had to make some changes. A lifelong nonbeliever, he found himself on a bizarre adventure, involving a disgraced pastor, a mysterious self-help guru, and a gaggle of brain scientists.

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism

In the very near future, smart “technologies and big data” will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such “solutionism” affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast as uncontroversial and easily manageable matters of technological efficiency?

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

Why do only a few people get to say "I love my job?" It seems unfair that finding fulfillment at work is like winning a lottery; that only a few lucky ones get to feel valued by their organizations, to feel like they belong. Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home feeling fulfilled. This is not a crazy, idealized notion. Today, in many successful organizations, great leaders are creating environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things.

Throughout history, there are some events that stand out as so groundbreaking that they completely change life as we know it. The Apollo moon landing of 1969 was one of those events - the invention of the Apple personal computer was another. In this book, John Sculley - former CEO of both Pepsi and Apple - claims we are in an era that is giving birth to numerous groundbreaking events and inventions - moonshots - that will change the way we live and work for generations to come.

The Foundations of Western Civilization

What is Western Civilization? According to Professor Noble, it is "much more than human and political geography," encompassing myriad forms of political and institutional structures - from monarchies to participatory republics - and its own traditions of political discourse. It involves choices about who gets to participate in any given society and the ways in which societies have resolved the tension between individual self-interest and the common good.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

Ben Horowitz offers essential advice on building and running a startup - practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences.

Publisher's Summary

Audie Award Finalist, Business/Educational, 2014

Once considered tedious, the field of statistics is rapidly evolving into a discipline Hal Varian, chief economist at Google, has actually called "sexy". From batting averages and political polls to game shows and medical research, the real-world application of statistics continues to grow by leaps and bounds. How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you'll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more.

For those who slept through Stats 101, this book is a lifesaver. Wheelan strips away the arcane and technical details and focuses on the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key concepts such as inference, correlation, and regression analysis, reveals how biased or careless parties can manipulate or misrepresent data, and shows us how brilliant and creative researchers are exploiting the valuable data from natural experiments to tackle thorny questions.

You’ll encounter clever Schlitz Beer marketers leveraging basic probability, an International Sausage Festival illuminating the tenets of the central limit theorem, and a head-scratching choice from the famous game show Let’s Make a Deal - and you’ll come away with insights each time. With the wit, accessibility, and sheer fun that turned Naked Economics into a best seller, Wheelan defies the odds yet again by bringing another essential, formerly unglamorous discipline to life.

This book will not teach you the mathematics behind statistics. This book is about making you understand what you are doing when you are doing statistics. Thus it is a great complement to a university course where you might learn how to plug in numbers in SPSS or MATLAB and get a p-value but don't really understand the assumptions involved and the potential pitfalls that must be considered.

Though I have studied some statistics at university level this book still provided a fresh valuable perspective on many statistical issues. It also gives examples of many, often costly mistakes scientists made in the past using statistics.

The analogy I used in the title (taken from this book), really captures an important aspect of statistics. If used properly statistics can tell us if a medication, or a certain policy is effective. If used improperly, it can lead to erroneous medical advice with fatal consequences, in the literal sense.

I would recommend this book if you are taking statistics but often don’t know what you are really doing or how what you are doing relates to real life issues. Alternatively, this book can also be read by people who don’t know any statistics but want to understand what it is all about without having to learn to do the actual math. If you are already an advanced student in statistics and know what you are doing (and know what not to do), then this book might not be for you.

I love statistics and I am comfortable with equations and numbers so maybe this is just not the right book for me. The early chapters on mean, median and mode were great, even standard deviation, but then it got a bit tedious. There was no associated PDF and no ebook companion on Audible, but lots of equations read out verbally like; “S divided by the square root of sixty two equals thirty six over seven point nine or four point six. The difference between the sample mean of one hundred and ninety four and the population mean of one hundred and sixty two is thirty two pounds or well more than three standard errors”. I love equations, but I found this stuff tedious in Audible format (thus non-Audible).

I particularly did not like the presentation of reversion to the mean. Many people misunderstand this topic, and Wheelan’s description did not seem to help. The important thing to grasp is that if you first flip ten tails then need to guess the total number of tails after a hundred flips (ninety more flips) you should guess 55 tails NOT 50 tails. Wheelan does not make any mis-statements in the section, but it seemed to me, the section leaves the incorrect impression to the uninitiated.

I generally dislike throwing in Latin for no good reason. Wheelan introduces then repeatedly uses “ceteris paribus” meaning with other things remaining the same. Why use the Latin?

The author also seems to gloss over some of the deep weaknesses of statistics. One of the key weaknesses of statistics is the world sometimes changes in wildly unexpected ways. Using statistics to make predictions about such a changing world is fraught with risk.

This is a very good entry point (or refresher) for statistics. The author obviously invested time in putting together clear and simple examples. More advanced stats people might be disappointed. I like this better than another broad-audience statistics book, "The Signal and the Noise" by Nate Silver. For me, the explanations here are clearer and the concepts flow better.

Wheelan's treatment of the Central Limit Theorem was well thought out and expertly illustrated. For most readers this will be a rehash-- but a welcome rehash as it is one of the most important concepts in all of statistics.

What about Jonathan Davis’s performance did you like?

The reader had a very deliberate style. You can tell he took great pains to convey and reinforce the message. Mr Davis was easily one of the best readers I've had the chance to listen to on Audible.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Statistics...made refreshing

Any additional comments?

Every manager and data analyst worth their salt should take the time to listen to this book. There is solid substance on offer here-- without the typically lengthy historical rehashes.

Part of my job is dealing with statistics for program evaluation for a non-profit. So I have to think about how to accurately look at statistics quite frequently.

Naked Statistics is a very good introduction to the proper use (and lots of examples of improper use) of statistics. This is intended for the average person and while it includes a little bit of math, the main focus is trying to help the reader develop an intuition for how statistics are supposed to work and be used and not really explain the math behind how they work.

What is particularly useful is the large number of relevant examples. Wheelan discusses Netflix recommendations, political polling, medical research, probability using lottery and other gambling games and a many other areas where statistics are commonly used, which in our world is almost everything area of life.

In our technocratic world, and one where advocacy groups often misuse statistics, it is very important that everyone have a basic understanding of statistics. I have read several other intro to statistics books like this to particularly remind myself how statistics are often misused. This is probably the best one I have read, both because of the relevant examples and because of the frequent use of humor.

It probably could have been cut a little bit, but I read the most recent edition that was updated last year and includes a number of up to date examples from recent economics, politics and technology.

I listened to the audiobook version and it was very well done, but there were several places that charts or graph would have made it easier to follow. There was an associated PDF with the audiobook, but I listen to audiobook when I often can’t spend time looking at a PDF. There were only a couple places where I thought it mattered (and with most of them I knew what was trying to be explained), but it is something to pay attention to if you have less experience with statistics.

He did a great job making a very complex subject understandable in audio format. I did have to go back to a couple of topics and listen again, but that is just the nature of the subject. I think I did learn a few new things.

If I were dictator, I would force Charles Wheelan to sit in a cell and write until he had completed a volume like this for every branch of mathematics. I am a numbers-phobe but also a graduate student in political science who understood NOTHING about statistics when I came out of not my first -- but my second methods course. I learned more by listening to this book than I deed in two years of courses. It is awesome. I would encourage anyone who wants to know about statistics but thinks what you are learning in a statistics class is impossible and not intuitive (which is how I felt) to listen/read this book. It brings clarity to all. Thank you Mr. Wheelan!

Would you consider the audio edition of Naked Statistics to be better than the print version?

I think this would be better in print. There were many formulas and references to figures that, while well described, don't really transfer well to audio.

Any additional comments?

If you've taken introductory statistics, this book is almost entirely review. But it did help to clear up a couple of concepts that I never fully grasped. There are also a few interesting facts thrown in.

If you've never taken statistics, everything is explained very clearly and in an interesting way.

I enjoyed the author's humor and the narrator's ability to deliver that humor. This book's description of the power and misuses of statistics is similar to books like, 'The drunkards walk' and Nate Silver's "The signal and the noise". I wish I would have discovered 'Naked Statistics" first. Many of the examples and stories I had already heard in the book's I have mentioned, however the author delivers them in a much more humorous way. I could not finish the book, and this is no way due to the fault of the author or the narrator, it's only due to the fact that I had already heard the information.

Very well written - engaging and interesting. It's a stats class that woudl have been fun to take in school. Covers basic stats from mean and median up to regression analysis and things to watch for when interpreting these statistics.

Due to the content, it's sometimes difficult to follow in the audio version and a visual would have been helpful but otherwise, a useful and worthwhile discussion of important understandings of the use of statistics in the real world.

This is one of the best introductory statistics books I've listened to or read. It covers statistics as a general topic without getting bogged down in too much detail. Therefore, people are likely to come away with a clearer understanding of the topic overall. Many introductory texts focus on specific simple tests etc. and lose the overall concepts.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

dot_stockport

1/4/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"pretty decent stuff!"

Right. for info I'm not a stats newbie so cannot speak for those who are. This is a clear and correct account of basic stats principles with relevant examples. it's designed for a us audience, so starting with baseball averages isnt great for those of us who arent frim baseball nations, but its not baseball all the way. The reading is at the better end of the scale for a non fiction book, there is some intonation and no horrible mispronouncition, but it still seems like the reader was bored or didnt understand at points. I found it a neat quick refresher.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

firemonkey

Harrogate, United Kingdom

12/10/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"Great intro book"

If you could sum up Naked Statistics in three words, what would they be?

A well told, easy listen, intro to statistics as a whole, some of the finer (beginners') points, stories, anecdotes, references, and ethics.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Naked Statistics?

Enjoyed hearing the statistical proof that 50% of published academic papers are trash, with a 50% chance of the published proof being trash :)

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

iStatistics

Any additional comments?

No more sausage club buses please!

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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